


A twisted soul

by alchimie



Series: between the devil and the deep blue sea [2]
Category: Unus Annus - Fandom, Video Blogging RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Supernatural Elements, CrankGameplays - Freeform, Demon Deals, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Established Relationship, Heavy Angst, M/M, Markiplier - Freeform, Psychological Trauma, Unus Annus
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-07
Updated: 2021-03-06
Packaged: 2021-03-12 02:20:58
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 16,205
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29252859
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alchimie/pseuds/alchimie
Summary: After everything that they went through, Mark is finally back, but something just isn't quite right. When Mark continues to be tormented by vivid nightmares and bizarre visions, it becomes clear that everything isn't over just yet.
Relationships: Mark Fischbach/Ethan Nestor
Series: between the devil and the deep blue sea [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2122671
Comments: 4
Kudos: 35





	1. The red in my eyes

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for all the positive feedback from the first part. I'm really excited to move forward with my ideas going forward. Now that the semesters back in full swing, I may take a little longer at times to update, so just a heads up!
> 
> CW: Some minor descriptions of violence/torture

_ The clock is almost up. _

_ The dawn climbs onto the edge of the horizon, her strong hands starting to show pink warmth in the eastern skies. I don’t have much longer. _

_ The man sitting beside me is melting into my side. I look over to him to see his eyes fighting to stay open, but it’s of no use. They eventually close, and I see those beautiful blue-green for the last time. I smile gently as the last piece of my heart breaks. _

_ The clock is almost up.  _

_ Though my body is worn and my mind is exhausted, I run on the last bits of spirit left inside of me and pull the limp young man into my arms. I want to sit here longer, cradling him in my arms until the light finally goes out for me, but I know it’s not right to leave him out here. I don’t know what he will find, or if he will find anything. I want him to be warm and safe, one last, small thing I can do for him. A tear falls onto his cheek. I guess at some point I started crying. He stirs for a moment but is not shaken from his slumber. He’s had a long day - we both have. He deserves his rest. Pushing through the last charge in my battery, I stand up, holding onto him tightly. It takes some messy maneuvering with my shoulder, but I’m able to slide the glass door open to take us back inside our home. His home, now.  _

_ I wonder if he’ll continue to live here. The selfish part of me hopes he does. As if somehow him staying here will allow me to stay with him longer. I know that’s a lie.  _

_ My logical side hopes that he does move out. The side that wants him to go on, live his life and eventually forget about me as time goes by. Finally have the chance to break away from my shadow. Maybe eventually move back east, be with his family, start his own family. Meet someone more permanent.  _

_ I was never meant to be his long term. Despite my selfish desires, I know the best thing for him is to move on. Heal through the pain of losing someone close, but then continue to the next chapter of his life. Meet someone new that is kind and caring and laughs at his dumb jokes. Someone else that will make him smile that sweet smile of his. Anyone could fall in love with someone like that, so full of life and potential. It’s just a matter of time.  _

_ Then he can be free. Have whatever future he wants, and I can just be a memory. _

_ When I get upstairs, I see more light on the horizon through the bedroom window as I lay him onto the bed. Chica is fast asleep on the ground beside my side of the bed, snoring not-so-quietly. Spencer, on the other hand, stirs awake from his spot on the foot of the bed, tired but excited when he sees his father on the bed. He must have been waiting here for a while for us to go to sleep. I leave him for a moment to go to where my sweet companion lays on her side. I gave her a gentle stroke on the top of her head, careful not to disturb her from whatever goofy dream she is in the middle of. I will miss her so much.  _

_ My attention goes back to the man asleep on top of the bed. God, sometimes it’s wild to think of the man that he has become. He was so young when he first moved out here. Like a baby deer walking on wobbly legs. Now look at him. _

_ I pull the blue envelope from my back pocket, laying it on the bedside table on my side of the bed before sitting down on the bed beside him. _

_ The clock is almost up.  _

_ I see sunlight threatening on the horizon. _

_ Curling up against him, I wrap my arms tightly around his waist.  _

_ I don’t know if there is such a thing as parallel universes or not, but for the briefest moment I allow myself to get sucked up in the fantasy. Maybe somewhere, somehow there is a world where the sunlight never comes. Where this star-filled night lasts forever and I never have to leave his side. Maybe somewhere there is a universe where I am free from my coming fate. Maybe somewhere there is a universe where today is just Saturday. I get to wake up and make coffee and scramble some eggs like any other weekend. I get to wake up, healthy and alive, with my partner. I get to wake up for thousands more Saturdays with him. Just us living in this big blue world.  _

_ The light grows stronger. I see the sliver of that damned star growing in the distance. _

_ Memento mori. Remember death.  _

_ I hear it’s voice calling to me.  _

_ “I love you, Ethan.” I whisper it into his ear. He murmurs in his sleep, but nothing intelligible comes from his lips. It makes me smile nonetheless.  _

_ The sun will rise and though I will be gone, he will still be here.  _

_ And that is enough.  _

_ The clock is up.  _

_ When the sun rises, everything goes red.  _

_ When the sun rises, I’m engulfed in a scarlet conflagration.  _

_ When the sun rises, everything becomes pain.  _

_ My bed is gone. My room is gone. Ethan is gone. Everything is fire and I can feel my soul being burned from my flesh. Tiny claws rip at me through cracks in the inferno until there is nothing left. _

_ I hear laughing. I hear screaming. I hear wailing. I think most of the noises come from my mouth, but I’m just not too sure.  _

_ As soon as it’s happening, it’s ended. All in one piece, I appear in a black void and it’s freezing. _

_ I hear laughing. _

_ “Welcome home.” _

*

I wake up with a start, covered in cold sweat and panting from the visions in my mind. Despite the new setting, my heart remains in the relentless panic of my unconsciousness, pounding aggressively in my ears. Unluckily for my concerned partner, I flail out towards the first hand I feel touch my arm and almost slap Ethan right in the nose. 

“Jesus Christ - another bad sleep?” 

A polite way of saying it.

Another night of the same flashes of torture, flashes of entrapment, flashes of the hell that was my life for so much longer than this calm has been. Another night of the memories that I fluctuate between trying to believe really happened to me and trying to believe aren’t still happening to me. 

Another bad sleep - a polite way of saying it.

I know he doesn’t mean to say it in such a dismissive way, but I can’t help but feel frustrated with it. 

I nod, pushing the hair out of my face. 

Eighth night in a row. The sunlight coming in through the window tells me I at least slept through the darkness, but I still feel just as exhausted in this moment as if I had only slept a half-hour. 

“Sorry, I didn’t hit you, did I?”

He shakes his head, laying back down. “No, I think my face will go on to live another day,” he says, yawning. 

My head turns to check the digital clock on the bedside table. 7:05 AM. That must be at least a new record, right? From what I remember, I finally mustered up the courage to let my eyes close again at around 3:00AM, and I didn’t wake up once in the middle of the night. 

Ever since I got “back”, sleep has been nothing but a pipe dream. The first night after I woke up in my sore, burned body beside Ethan on the cold floor, I lulled myself into a false sense of security being reunited with my old life and the partner I thought I would never see again. That’s not to say it wasn’t pure, genuine happiness that coursed through my veins getting to wake up. Getting to carry the exhausted man that had saved my life up the stairs and into our bed, just as I had the last night I saw him. Seeing him walk down those very stairs hours later, looking completely worn and still like the most beautiful thing I had ever witnessed. That first day could not last forever, though, and we eventually walked together to bed, eager to lay in each other’s arms for the first time in ages. It was the first and last moment that I knew true peace, curled up face to face with Ethan, whispering stupid nonsense and giggling with one another until sleep finally took us in. An hour later, I woke up screaming and thrashing around the bed, inconsolable until the sun rose. 

A black cloud has lingered over my head since then. I’ve been able to keep it together much better, but every night I go without sleep and with the fear of my own unconscious state, I can feel a shaking in my core growing more and more, as if something is building.

I try to hold it back as much as I can. Within a few days, I had buried myself back into work, feeling guilty for how much my “substitute” had slacked on the job. It was also a pleasant distraction, getting to play the part once again and pretend my life was normal. For the first time, theoretically, it is. 

I’m not fooling Ethan, I know that. I can see his constant worried glances, the way his eyes always linger in a way they haven’t before. As normal as I try to act during the day, he always sees me at night. 

“You gettin’ up?” Ethan asks, eyes already closed again.

My heart breaks a little, seeing my tired boyfriend. With all my panic and sleep disturbances, he hasn’t been getting any sleep either. Lord knows he deserves it for everything he did to help me. I feel awful that this is the way I’m repaying him. 

“Yeah, I don’t think I can go back to sleep after that.”

Eyes still closed tightly, he pushes up onto his elbows. “‘Kay, I can get up too and -”

Gently, I push him back down into the bed by his shoulder. His face scrunches up and he lets out a groan, but I keep my hand firmly pressing him into the bed.

“You should get some rest. I’ll be okay on my own for a bit, okay? You haven’t gotten a full night all week.”

I don’t have to keep pushing him down onto the bed for long, as he gives up pretty quickly. “Neither have you, pal.”

“Then you should sleep for both of us.” Leaning over, I press a kiss against his warm forehead. “Then you can be in charge of watching over me, yeah?”

“Fine.” He peeks out at me for a moment through his heavy eyelids. “‘M sorry dreams’re bad still. Love you.”

“I love you, too. Get some rest, Ethan.” 

*

My memories from before are not linear, and it can feel exhausting at times to attempt to piece them together in a clear timeline. Wherever I was, time just didn’t work the same. Coming back to the “real” world and finding out only about a month of time passed was shocking. Years worth of moments and flashes of feeling floated around in my head like a cloud full of tiny polaroid photos. 

The majority of the polaroids were just moments of me in the dark. I would spend weeks on end wandering around through a black-red void, searching for anything. My body would never tire in there, wherever _ there _ was. I would never feel tired, or exhausted, or sleepy, or even hungry. I would hardly ever even feel emotions, just a poignant emptiness as I searched for some sort of meaning in the endless expanse. Sometimes I wouldn’t even remember my name, what I was doing, how I had gotten there. My mind would go just as blank as the space around me. I wouldn’t even feel my body anymore. I wonder if it would drift into nothingness as well, leaving my empty psyche to float through the expanse. 

Sprinkled generously in the mix of these moments, however, were also the painful memories. There were moments where I would be stationary, trapped by some force I could not see or even feel. It was a hand deep inside me gripping onto every cell in my body to keep me still. The darkness around me would glow bright ruby red, almost blindingly as I anticipated the pain that would follow. The unknown force, the invisible hand keeping me still would reach deeper into me, into what must have been my very soul and start to bleed it. The pain wasn’t physical - it wasn’t the same as cutting my arm or being beaten or even pepper sprayed. Whatever it was twisted something in me mentally and spiritually. It’s hard to even fully comprehend it now, not being in that state any longer. All I know is that when I start to think about those moments, my whole body starts to shake. 

` I have only spoken about those moments briefly. Ethan’s encouraged me to speak with the woman - Edith - about it, but I try to shrug it off, to bury these flashes as much as possible. I understand a little better now, at least, being outside of that place. He was using me as a literal battery, plugging into the very force of my soul for his own power. 

Beyond the pain and the nothingness, there were other moments intermittent through my cloud of thoughts. These were a lot rarer, but feel bizarrely vivid despite the sensation of seeing them through a mist. 

Sometimes I would see flashes of another world through another set of eyes. His eyes, I guess I should say. The hours spent locked in my room, tapping into forces I didn’t understand. Staring into the red stone on the desk. Speaking on the phone with strangers. Sneaking out into the night, meeting with those strangers. I remember one person in particular. A woman that he brought home. A feeling of discomfort as he put his hands - no,  _ my _ hands - on this stranger. The slight sting as he pricked my finger and let the blood drop into a glass of red wine. Her green eyes, her desperate green eyes surrounded by a canopy of dark curls.Then a shadow in the window. Ethan.

Ethan at the door of my recording room, eyes wide with concern. Ethan watching me from across the hall as my body storms out of the house. Ethan barely awake, hair longer than it's been, rustled around his face, looking up at me from where he sits on the bed as my mouth says words that felt so painful to hear in my own voice. Ethan hearing me say things I would never say in a million years. Ethan wearing that broken look on his face before my body turns away from him and heads out of the house. 

For so long, I didn’t believe these visions were real. Just bizarre dreams breaking the monotony of the dark. They came and went in spurts. Like dreams, sometimes they would occur and immediately after I could barely remember what I had seen. 

There was that surreal moment. I could hardly differentiate it from my own memories and my memories through the creature’s eyes. Glowing like a righteous blue light, he was here in my void with me, if just for a few moments. He was glowing the same blue as the paper I left for him.

As he stood in front of me, like a lighthouse guiding me back to the shore, I could feel that he had the letter on him. I don’t know how, but I knew I could almost see it in real time. Yes, there was a flash of it on an unfamiliar kitchen table, positioned between Ethan and someone else that I couldn’t quite see. 

“How did you get here?”

Could this really have been him? Surely, this was another bizarre vision, another dream that would come and go quickly like all the others.

“It doesn’t matter right now. I need your help. This thing that you made a deal with - we have to stop it. It’s in your body and it’s trying to make more deals.”

My eyes widened in that moment.

“It’s in my body?”

This devil, using my body. I wanted to shoot him down, to insist that he was wrong. There was no way that could have been true, because -- 

“But I should be dead. I am dead. I thought - Is this not h-?”

Is this not hell?

I think about the visions.

He shook his head before I could utter another word. “This isn’t the after life. It has you in some weird trap, some red stone, but it’s still out and about pretending to be you, which is why you need to help me to stop it. I need its name, Mark. Do you remember its name?”

I tried so hard to remember, to bring up the name I had heard so long ago. When I could finally say it, he was already gone. Once he was left, it was hard to believe I had seen him at all.

There was one thing that changed after that, though. The only proof I had that any of it really happened - that Ethan really came to visit my void and speak with me.

When I closed my eyes to the darkness around me, sometimes I could see a soft blue light far, far away. 

*

As soon as I am awake and alone, I am restless.

This whole time that I’ve been “back”, Ethan really hasn’t left my side. Whether for my own comfort or for his, he never wandered out of eye sight. At first, I felt extremely comforted by it. Those first two days I convinced myself that if I didn’t have him, the constant reminder of my living existence around then I would blink and be back in that dark black-red void, trapped for eternity. While those intrusive thoughts still creep back into the back of my head from time to time, it seems now that Ethan tends to linger more for his own fear that if he looks away from me, something in me will snap. I guess it makes sense considering everything he witnessed. Knots form deep in my stomach whenever I think of him being in that creature’s presence. 

Specific images come to mind that I try hard to shove back down of what that creature did to Ethan with my hands. 

Pushing my long hair out of my face, I can feel my ear still a little sore. The dull ache is a helpful distraction from the unpleasant thoughts coming to mind. It didn’t hurt much, but I know that maybe - just maybe - it would have been smart for me to numb my ear the second time around. One of my first projects coming back was re-piercing the ear that we had pierced before. I couldn’t really tell why, but it was heavy on my mind the first few days, and the kit was still there waiting for me in the room that had become Unus Annus graveyard. Ethan seems to like it, too, which is nice. 

I sip down my freshly brewed coffee, not caring that it’s a little too hot for comfort. Maybe I can burn away the thoughts with enough caffeine and persistence. 

I sit at the kitchen table for a while, scrolling mindlessly through my phone in an attempt to have some kind of normalcy. It works for a few minutes, catching up on the world around me that I missed for a month while my drowsy dog comes up to nudge at my hand for pets.The sense of normalcy eventually fades, however, as thoughts of before come knocking at the door of my mind.

I wonder what happened to that woman from my visions. The woman with the green eyes and the curly hair. Would she come back, looking for a very different Mark?

Maybe I need to get up and do something. Get away from these thoughts. On a normal day, I would start off by working out first thing. A morning run would usually get my mind and body into gear, but the thought of straying from home for too long terrified me. I am not yet ready to be out on my own. There’s also the option of just using my recumbent bike to stay home, but even then something about being in the room with the ramen-filled hole in the wall doesn’t sit easy with me. The memory of punching the wall - it reminds me of other things I rather not think about right now.

Maybe now would be a better time to start recording? The idea seems decent enough. I always feel better when I can be productive, and what better way to distract myself than to play some random bullshit and act goofy? Ethan’s a pretty heavy sleeper, I’m sure as long as I’m not ridiculously loud, I won’t disturb him. I made sure to ultra soundproof the room as well as I could for that very reason. Not to mention, we have to be careful about sound when both of us are working at the same time now. Just some of the struggles of two Let’s Players living together full-time. 

It takes another cup of coffee and more efforts than it should to get me in the right headspace before heading into my recording room.

I start off with pretty simple, easy content sorts of videos. I dig through some old bookmarks of websites I had found previously that I thought would be good material for either Unus Annus or just things I could get to at some point. 

It’s pleasant how easy it is for me to seep into the “Markiplier” persona. Not that it’s drastically different from who I am - I just allow myself to get more carefree, more silly, and most of all focused on the task at hand and absolutely nothing else. I don’t have to worry about devils and nightmares when I can just be loud and obnoxious while taking online hearing tests or playing around with so-called “art breeders”. Being able to work and make dumb videos that I know people will still like is comforting. I almost feel like myself again. 

Making videos alone makes me think about my friends. I really haven’t talked to Bob and Wade much since I got back, have I? It’s hard for me to remember if that thing had been talking to them much at all. I’m scared to look back at my old texts, though I know at some point I will need to do some kind of damage control on my social life. I miss them so much. I’m not much of a socialite, I don’t always surround myself with many people especially the longer that I am a Youtuber and more comfortable in who I am and how I present myself. However, the small group of close friends I have are so important to me. I wonder what they all think from my bizarre behavior this past month.

I shake the thought to focus back on recording. 

After playing around with a few websites, I decided it would probably be best to also focus on recording some game play, too. I got plenty of time on this day with how early I’m up and no need to be anywhere for Unus Annus or any other big projects just yet. I also have a plentiful supply of itch.io and Steam horror games saved in various bookmarks on my recording computer. 

And I continue to play my part. I record, make my weird noises and play the spooky games. And it feels nice.

I take a break once the next “3 Scary Games” has been completed. It’s starting to get deep into the afternoon. Maybe I should eat, but I really don’t feel hungry. I brew myself another cup of coffee and peek into the bedroom where my exhausted boyfriend is still deep asleep, the smaller of our dogs curled up next to him in the spot that usually belongs to me. 

On any other occasion, I would probably shake him up and lightly chastise him for sleeping in so late. Sometimes, despite being in our romantic relationship now over a year, it’s hard to shake the “older brother” role I had adapted for a lot of our friendship. Today, however, I know he deserves to sleep in as long as he wants. 

Nursing my fresh cup of Joe, I make my way back to my recording space. I’ve been going at it for several hours, but it’s honestly been so healing to be back at it. Maybe just one more game for today, eh?

What could go wrong?

I have one more idea fresh in my head that I had been saving before in case I had time. I was hoping that it could have been something I filmed with friends, but maybe this will just be a solo-Mark adventure for now. I really should text Bob and Wade. Silently, I promise myself that I will finally go through my phone and start to reach out to people tonight after I’m done with filming. My stomach turns at the thought, or maybe it’s the fact that I have consumed only coffee all day. Regardless, it turns. 

I have to move my set-up a little bit since my recording space is not ideal for VR. I take all the things I need and move it into another space across the hall. It’s not as well soundproofed, so hopefully my childish screams at dumb horror do bother my sleeping partner too much, though it is getting far past the exceptional time of day to still be in bed. 

Once everything is all set to go, I turn my set on and start up Phasmophobia. 

It becomes painfully obvious from the start that I have no clue what I am doing without the help of Bob, Wade, or Jack. Even while selecting items, I am nearly useless in trying to figure out what I need and what I don’t. With stubborn spite, I continue forward with my uneducated guesses, going head first into the game play with the best that I have at this moment. 

Outside of my complete ineptitude at the game, things go decently well. I mean, I definitely die a lot and make awful mistakes in the first few rounds. Hopefully enough of it is funny enough that editing it down can make something enjoyable, albeit frustrating for all the commenters that will insist that I am a grade A idiot. In their defense, I am.

Things start to change when I get onto the next level, though. 

I don’t know if it’s a glitch in the game or just me accidentally pressing the wrong buttons, but before I can select the next stage to go onto, the game takes me to a new map. I don’t catch the name in time, but the game starts up in the same way as any other map. I’m in the van, with my list of objectives and a name of the ghost that I’m after. Sophie Abreu. 

I gather the props that I can with my limited storage and head outside the virtual van. 

After playing so many times with friends, I have been familiarized with probably most of the more common settings in the game. The house that I see in front of me is familiar, but not one that I have ever seen in the game before. It almost reminds me of a house that was on my street back where my dad used to live in Ohio. It’s a single storage, grey painted house with a white-painted porch in front. Windows peer out from what I assume is a sitting room, judging by the single lamp illuminating an empty couch on the inside. On the porch itself, I see a swinging bench, swaying slightly in the wind. 

I try to push the similarities between the house I had seen long ago out of my mind. This must just be one of the new settings they had added to the game or something. It’s nice to see the graphics getting better - really adds a new level of immersion with the VR. 

As I pass through the threshold, I notice that I haven’t said a single word since coming out the van.

“Lixian, edit that out. I totally just zoned. Anyway - “

I continue on with my typical commentary, loud bravado, and over-the-top reactions for a few minutes. The inside of the house is pitch-black apart from where my flashlight reaches out. I search desperate for the first few minutes to find any sort of lamp or light switch. Hadn’t I seen a lamp from the outside? 

The more I wandered around the inside of the home, the more I started to realize that the interior didn’t make sense with what I had seen of the exterior. Where I had seen a light and a couch near the front door there was a room full of bookshelves lining the walls. The room went much further out than the house extended from the outside. There were long hallways in a maze leading to several locked doors that seemed to go on further than any other setting in this game. I even find a stairway at one point leading up to a second floor that had not appeared from the outside. Maybe it’s more glitching - maybe I got a stage that wasn’t completed or something on accident. Nervous with the nonsensical layout, I try to push forward and act as if nothing is wrong and enter the second floor. 

When I reach the upstairs, I appear again at the front of the house.

Maybe this is just part of the game now? It’s really doing a great job at creating immense discomfort if so. 

As I enter the house again, I am no longer met by the room with the lining of bookshelves. Instead the front door opens up to a long hallway with a faint red light at the end.

My heart beats a little bit faster. 

It’s just a game. A really fucking good game, apparently. I can handle a stupid horror game. It’s what I’ve been doing for almost a decade, after all.

I swear for a second I hear someone whisper my name.

It’s just a game. 

I notice again that I have been silent and standing in place for a while.

“You know what, maybe I’ll just edit this one myself,” I murmur as I start to finally move forward in the hallway. 

Maybe I should just cut this section out completely? I can’t tell still if this level is glitching out or working exactly as it should. I hope whatever might be wrong with the game isn’t corrupting the recording or my equipment at all.

While I “walk” down the hallway, the game occasionally freezes for a second before sending me back a few seconds. As if something is trying to keep me away from the glowing red light. 

I keep on going, though.

Once I get to the source of the light, I enter a space that looks similar to the screen you get after you have died in the game. Everything is white with the black shadows of people standing around, completely still, but instead of having a blue hue to the light everything is slightly red. Curious, I move forward to inspect the figures, expecting some kind of jump scare in response, but nothing happens. I reach out to touch the figures, but my hands go right through them. They have no clear features - they are all completely black, only in the shape of human characters. 

Even without faces and eyes, I still get the disconcerting sensation that they are all looking at me. 

When I turn around, the door that led me into this room is gone.

It’s just a game.

I weave through the crowd, trying to look for some way out or some sign of what I should be doing next. This must be a glitch, right? I probably should just restart my game, but I don’t. Something pulls me to stay, pulls me to continue wandering around this room.

After minutes of silently moving through shadow figures, I see one silhouette apart from the rest. Someone stands alone at the edge of what must be this room, facing the corner. Despite every inch of me feeling absolutely on edge from the site of it, I advance towards this figure.

As I get closer, I can see that this character is not shrouded completely in darkness. I can see the olive green of their jacket and the blue jeans they wear. They have dark brown hair to their shoulders, and judging by what I can see of their figure, I think they may be a man. The closer I look, the more I also notice that this “character” is not in the same art style as the rest. It looks uncomfortably hyperrealistic. More like a photo than a drawing. 

Just as I get within a few feet of this character, everything goes black in the game. 

There is only a beat of darkness before bright red eyes flash at me.

In real life, I stumble onto the ground after taking a miscalculated step backwards, tripping myself on some kind of wire on the floor. The headset falls off its position, a clear reminder that whatever I saw was not real life. 

I look towards my laptop where the game has been running, hoping I could see what is going on now, but the screen is black. The battery is dead - when did it die?

How long has it been dead?

I shake my head. That’s a stupid thought, whatever happened was just a glitch in the game and nothing else. I’ll have to deal with whatever corruption happened to the video if the video even survived the shutdown. 

I need to stop for the day. I need to take a shower and just clear my mind again. 

I make a b-line towards the bathroom. At some point in my recording process, it had gotten dark outside, which I could only see through the windows in the rooms I pass. I hear sounds coming from the kitchen downstairs, probably Ethan finally being a person after a day of sleeping. 

I step into the bathroom, turn on the lights and close the door.

Before anything else, I run the sink, starting to splash some water in my face, hoping it can help calm me down.

It was just a game.

I blink and the lights go off.

I blink again and I see red eyes staring back at me in the mirror. 


	2. Felt like a kiss

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> At first, it’s a scene I have lived through before. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A bit of a shorter chapter this time, hopefully I'll have more time this week towards writing, but I definitely wanted to get this part out and didn't want to add too much filler to try to make it longer. Definitely be sure to head the warnings in the next few chapters - some parts of this will be getting darker than the original because of the nature of what I have planned.

CW: depictions of violence, blood, death

That wasn’t the last time that I saw those eyes staring back at me. 

For a whole week, I try to act as if everything is normal. I still don’t sleep more than a few hours at a time, but that starts to just become part of the suspected routine. Ethan tries to stay awake with me when I can’t sleep at night, so after a while I end up just starting to play pretend just to make sure he’s getting enough shut eye. It pains me every morning when he wakes up that I see those dark circles under his eyes. My dark circles are slowly becoming permanent makeup on my face, which I can accept. Especially considering I spent very little time looking at myself in the mirror.

It doesn’t happen every time, and it never occurs during the day. It’s only at night when I’m not lucky that I catch a glimpse at my reflection and I see red. 

The second time I saw the eyes was when I was in the dark of the bedroom. Ethan had finally fallen asleep after his stubborn attempts to stay up with me. When hours of restlessness and both physical and mental anxiety wore down my headstrong drive to finally get some rest, I gave up, got up, and started pacing around the room. That’s when I saw bright red eyes peering through the shadows.

The full length mirror, in the corner by the closet. I stood on the opposite side of the room, but I could see clearly the two scarlet lights beaconing me closer. Something inside me turned off in those moments. I didn’t feel fear nor shock at the twisted reflection in the mirror. I simply approached quietly, letting the invisible leash tied to me tug me forward. 

The man watching me from the other side wore my skin, but he was not me. Beyond the glowing orbs, his smile also twisted in a way that was inhuman. I could not see it clearly, but a dark aura appeared to encompass this man, and he stood with a posture foreign to me. 

He reached out of the mirror with trembling fingers. I felt them scratch my face before the vision was gone.

In the morning, Ethan asked me why I had marks on my cheek. I lied and told him I didn’t know. 

From then on, the red came just in quick glimpses. Walking into the restroom and seeing the red eyes out of the corner of my eye in the mirror. Brushing my teeth at night, eyes focused down on the sink to avoid the mirror but still seeing a faint glow flash in front of me. Reflections in windows wearing that same inhuman smirk for an uncomfortable second.

I swallowed it down, denying to both my partner and myself that anything was afoot. 

The lack of sleep must be getting to me, I had thought. Lack of sleep and some very weird trauma that I just needed to work on alone. 

I kept working. I kept pushing forward. 

Ethan’s concerned looks began to linger more and more as the week went on. 

I kept insisting everything was fine. 

I was going to make everything fine. 

And then last night’s dream happened. 

*

_ At first, it’s a scene I have lived through before.  _

_ I know exactly how the script plays out, almost to the point where I could mouth the words in time from where I stand in my realm.  _

_ I hear their voices in the far distance before I can see them.  _

_ “I can help you if you let me.” _

_ That first voice, my voice, but not me. Low and seductive in an uncomfortable way. Hearing him speak with my tongue makes my skin crawl immediately. I want to rip from my prison and silence him, if only I could figure out how.  _

_ A long pause before he speaks again.  _

_ “I know everything Mark did to you.” _

_ “I d-don’t know what you’re talking about.” _

_ My heart begins to race, at least the closest thing to it does. Ethan’s voice sounds nervous. The actual words of the conversation are still registering in my mind, but just from the sounds, I want to reach out to Ethan. I want to protect him from whatever this creature wants. I want to hold him and let him know I won’t let anything hurt him. I remember the brief moment when he was here, when I touched him. It feels like years ago. Was it? I feel dizzy when I try to remember.  _

_ “You don’t have to lie to me. I have been here the whole time. Lurking in his shadows, seeing every choice he made and didn’t make. All the things he never really told you about his life.” _

_ In my void, in the darkness where I exist now, everything becomes still as I finally catch up to the words being spoken. _

_ It hurts me because this monster speaks the truth. _

_ Every moment, every second passed after I signed away my soul, I felt his presence. He never spoke and he never appeared to me again, but a heavy eye followed me wherever I was. I could feel the discomforting weight on my shoulders, the way it felt as if I was never truly alone. I remember how the world became just a little bit grayer after that night when I hit my lowest low back in Cincy.  _

_ I knew he was lurking every moment that I was alone with Ethan. I had gotten so good at putting it out of my mind, that sometimes I forgot that being alone with me was impossible.  _

_ If I could feel sick, I would. Every moment with my partner, twisted by something unnatural. I try to swallow this down, but the creature keeps talking in his stolen voice.  _

_ “I read the letter, too, Ethan.” _

_ The letter. _

_ I concentrate on the conversation, on the words being spoken, and I remember the letter. I see a blue light on the horizon. No, it’s not far away, but it’s foggy. I don’t see my void anymore. I slowly see the outlines of what I know to be my living room. A soft blue light. Ethan.  _

_ “I know it was full of lies, him trying to paint himself to be better than he was by playing martyr, like he always does...” _

_ The voice, my voice, goes on but I start to lose focus on the words. I see Ethan, glowing a gentle blue light as if a spotlight is shining down upon him. The anxiety, the fear, the unease - it’s all painted on his face. I want to grab his arm and pull him away, but I am not in this scene, just an observer from the sidelines.  _

_ “You had to stand in his shadow for so long… Always following his rules... But you deserved so much better… He revelled in the moments where he could keep you down...” _

_ The voice fades in and out, but I catch moments of him speaking lies. Twisting the moments of truth into a cruel torment, trying to turn Ethan against me. The blue light on Ethan starts to flicker and it becomes harder to see him as dark shadows start to envelope him.  _

_ On the other side of the shadows, I can start to see him. _

_ The creature in my body, with one hand cupping Ethan’s chin and the other on his thigh. _

_ Something within me starts to flutter.  _

_ I wish I could cut off my own hands if it meant that thing wouldn’t be able to touch him. I want to break out, to fight this literal hellspawn, to do anything to make it stop. _

_ I am powerless. _

_ I see Ethan start to ease into his touch and a part of me breaks.  _

_ My vision goes black for a few moments as I lose my concentration.  _

_ I try to push past the hurt, the anger, the sadness. I need to stop this. I need to make it stop. I reach back out, trying to find that blue light. _

_ I hear a voice again. _

_ “I can give you everything, Ethan. Would you like that?” _

_ It’s no longer a sustained view of the situation. I can only concentrate enough to see flashes, but they are still enough to cause the fluttering deep inside me to increase. _

_ I see his lips against Ethan’s as he whispers something insidious.  _

_ I see black shadows dancing around the young man.  _

_ I see Ethan’s eyes closing  _

_ I see him pressing his lips -  _ my  _ lips - to Ethan’s.  _

_ I can feel the space around me in my void shaking. I don’t know if I’m causing that, and I can’t bring myself to care in the moment. Everything inside of me feels red hot. I imagine myself reaching out to the blue light.  _

_ “Won’t you stay with me?” _

_ I imagine myself reaching out to the blue light and grabbing it. _

_ The fluttering in my soul escapes. Everything is trembling, even the visions of the living room.  _

_ For the briefest of seconds, my doppelganger appears in front of me in my world. _

I see you learned how to watch. Fine, I’ll give you a show.

_ He disappears as soon as he appears. I no longer have to focus to see the living room. It’s being broadcast to me directly, through eyes that used to belong to me. _

_ I see my hands - no,  _ his _ hands - grabbing Ethan by the collar and hoisting him into the air. Seeing through the devil’s eyes, I can see my partner’s face up close, the wide-eyed fear and pale shock. My view is still trembling, my anger still coursing through me and making my world quake. I can’t hear what they say to each other, I only see lips moving until Ethan is thrown across the room, head first into a wall. _

_ This is when things start to change. _

_ There is a storyline this should follow. A vial of holy water should break, giving Ethan a means of frantic escape. That’s what has happened every other time, or at least what I remember happens in the very end. Ethan makes it out. Ethan ends up okay. _

_ This time it’s different. _

_ Through the devil’s eyes, I see Ethan disoriented on the floor, slowly trying to pick himself up. I can hear his heartbeat pound uncontrollably through his chest. This feels more… real than before. I’m not just watching through the creature’s eyes. I am the creature looming over Ethan. _

_ I swing my fist down towards him. I hear the impact more than I even feel it as something pops in his jaw. Unlike the way that this has happened before, he doesn’t try to block the second attack, and I land a hit right on his eye. It appears darker almost instantly, and I know with time the marks on his face will only grow worse. He doesn’t try to stop me, only stares up at me with tears flowing down his face.  _

_ The blue light around him fades more.  _

_ With one more strike, Ethan slumps over, spitting up blood onto the floor in front of him and something else. A tooth? I can’t tell, and I don’t want to think longer. I don’t know why I can’t stop my body.  _

It’s not yours anymore. It will always be mine _. _

_ Reaching down, I can tell that Ethan is still conscious, but barely. The blue light flickers. _

_ I keep his head up by grabbing his chin gingerly. There’s a broken look in his blue-green eyes and a bloody gash on his lip. He’s no longer crying - just sporting a dull numbness. _

_ “I’m sorry, Mark,” he murmurs softly, but just loud enough for me to hear.  _

_ “You shouldn’t be. He’s the one that should be sorry for letting me do this. For letting you get involved.”  _

_ Why am I saying this? I’m the one speaking the words - I can feel every movement of my lips forming the perfect shapes, but I have no control over them spilling from my tongue.  _

_ I reach into my pocket and notice an object that was not there before.  _

_ Before Ethan can say another word, a knife is pressed to his throat.  _

_ Leaning in close, I whisper directly into his ear, sending a shiver up his spine. “Memento mori. Just like we always said, right, baby?” _

_ With a swift motion, the blade cuts into the tender skin. The blue light shines intensely for a brief moment before disappearing completely. Ethan’s body goes limp in my arms, and I no longer hear his anxious heartbeat. A smile on my face, I let the body fall onto the floor.  _

*

I wake up unable to breathe. 

My body trembles frantically as I reach around for something to grab a hold of. Blind fingers grip tightly onto the bed sheets around me as I desperately pant but it feels like I’m trying to breathe through a straw.

I feel something beside me start to move, but I am too consumed in my breathing to be able to look over towards it. My heart starts to beat loudly in my ears and I feel a pain in my chest. For a passing second, I wonder if this is a heart attack. It’s hard for me to really compare it to past experiences - my one and only “heart attack” ended with me passing out and being driven to the hospital from drinking. 

My skin feels like it’s burning up, but just as I’m noticing the rising temperature of the room - or maybe it’s just my body? - a new sensation occurs as I feel hands on my shoulders.

He whispers my name, but it sounds like he’s speaking from ten feet away. I try to catch my breath, but it just gets worse as the temperature continues to increase. 

Am I dying? Am I dead? 

For a second, I close my eyes and I’m back in that other realm that kept me away for so long.

I open my eyes again, and I’m back in the darkness of my bedroom. On top of the pain and the suffocation, it feels as if someone from the window is watching me. I can’t bring myself to look at the window or at my partner beside me, trying to comfort me. 

It feels as if hours pass as I sit there, shivering in the dark, wondering if I ever even made it back to life at all. Maybe I’ve been dead this whole time and this is hell. 

In time, everything starts to slow down. Cool air starts to tickle at my skin, causing the hairs on my arm to stand on edge. Calming breath finally flows into my lungs, filling them completely and reinflating me once again. I hear my name again, this time much closer.

“Mark, i-is everything okay?”

Turning my head, I look to my side where Ethan has been planted beside me this whole time. At least, I assume so. He appears just as wide awake as I am, round eyes wide with clear and present concern. How long has he just been watching me going through this?

A wave of light-headedness washes over me. 

“Y-yeah, sorry, I don’t know, I’m sorry about that, I just -”

It’s hard for me to try to piece together anything even semi-coherent. It has been a couple years since I had a full-fledged panic attack, let alone one in a situation like this. My brain is foggy; while I have feelings and thoughts floating around all over the place, nothing is resembling English or any other language for that matter. 

As my mind gradually returns to me, I remember the dream I woke from. I see flashes of Ethan’s terrified face, the way he stared up at me as I struck him over and over again. I see flashes of his limp body falling to the floor, blood coating his chest. 

I don’t like showing this level of vulnerability. Most of the time, I try so hard to be the “stronger” one in the relationship, unable to shake off this feeling of needing to take care of Ethan. Although I know Ethan has always wanted me to let him be a caregiver too, it’s my natural tendency to try to push my own concerns to the side. Right now, none of that really matters. Every time I blink, I see flashes of my partner falling lifeless onto the floor. I collapse into his hold, wrapping my arms tight around him to the point where it probably hurts us both a little bit. Burying my face into the warmth of his bare chest, I let the tears flow freely. 

He goes quiet but wraps his arms back around me in a soft embrace. I feel fingers start to comb through my hair. It’s almost a strange feeling with how long I’ve let it grow - not a bad strange, but a strange I’ve never experienced before. It soothes me, if at least slightly.

I can’t remember the last time I allowed myself to fall apart in his arms likes this. Maybe I never have.

I wonder what it would have been like if I had before. If I decide to tell him the truth from the start instead of keeping it quiet for so long. If I had allowed myself to cry against him that last night. Would it have been worth it? 

Maybe the creature was right. Maybe I was a coward for leaving the truth in a postmortem letter. Maybe I should have just been honest with Ethan from the start. Maybe he’s a lot stronger than I give him credit for. 

Slowly, I pull back from him, just enough to look at his face and try to gauge his response. It’s hard to read his expression, but a long moment of silence passes as we look at one another. 

“It was another bad dream. Really, really bad.”

Another pause. “Yeah, yeah, I kinda figure.”

Another pause. A too long pause. My stomach twists. I try to pull out my typical coping mechanism for this kind of uncomfortable tension.

“Yeah, you wouldn’t believe it. The dog died in this episode. Not either of our dogs - just some dog, but I got attached, y’know? I don’t have a good stomach for that thing.”

He doesn’t laugh. 

“Mark, this is really getting bad. I wonder if there is more we should do, you know? Maybe reach out to Edith, see if there’s more we can do.”

I shake my head. “No, really, I’m fine. Or, I guess - I will be fine. I mean, hell, I’ve just been back in my body for a week or two now, right? It sucks, but I know I can tough it out.”

The thought of actually admitting something is wrong feels wrong. If I actually share what’s going on, it feels as if that would give it power. I just want to push past this, wait it out until hopefully it all goes away. I want my normal, boring, stupid Let’s Player life without the supernatural complications. The last thing I want is to have to start on some journey to have Ethan’s soccer mom buddy to play with magic crystals and candles until ghost forces rework my brain. 

“Are you sure? This seems a lot more intense than before, and you still haven’t been able to sleep a whole night.”

“I’m sure.”

Another awkward pause. 

He gives a small nod. “Well, I guess if you’re sure then. What was the dream about this time? Do you wanna talk about it?”

I hesitate, but I know that I should still say something just so I don’t draw too much suspicion from Ethan. I don’t want to frighten him - especially considering how he played such a big part in it.

“It was just the night I died again. Same thing I had a few times before, but just a little more intense this time. I don’t know how to explain it, but that’s really the main thing. I don’t know why it affected me so much.”

I can read on his face that he knows I’m not telling the whole story here. Still, he gives me a small nod and says, “I’m sorry. That really sucks. Is there anything that I can do right now to help?”

Shaking my head, I glance over to the clock on the bedside. 5:45AM. Knowing how long it would take to try and get back to sleep, I decide it’s probably pointless. Not that I would want to risk whatever dream would come next anyway. 

“No, it’s okay. I think I’m just going to go take a shower and make some coffee.” I offer up a slight smile in his direction. “You should go back to sleep. I’ll wake you up if there’s anything I need, okay?”

He hesitates.

“Okay. Just, make sure you do actually wake me up if there is something, okay?”

Nodding, I lean over to press a kiss to his cheek. I linger for a moment, tempted to drop all of this and just tell him what my dream was  _ actually _ about, but the temptation passes quickly and instead I press another kiss closer to his jawline before backing away. 

I should have been smarter than to allow myself to walk past a mirror on my way to the shower. I should have known not to look up into it, allow my eyes to see my reflection for even a second. Maybe it’s the lingering dizziness, the sudden drop in adrenaline, or just more symptoms of sleep deprivation that allowed me to forget. 

When I look into the mirror this time, I don’t see red eyes staring back at me. I don’t see my face at all.

I see Ethan, eyes completely blacked out like coal stuck in his eye sockets. He is pale all over except for dark rings underneath his eyes and a blue hue starting to overcome his lips. Beyond all this, however, what catches my eye is the line of red that appears on his neck as I stare at this image, a wound opening up as I watch and letting out a stream of scarlet liquid flow down his neck to stain his white shirt below. He opens his mouth to scream, but nothing comes out. The lights in the room flicker red.

I blink and he’s gone. All I see is my face, pale and sweaty, now appearing where the ghost of Ethan had been. 


	3. A date with markiplier

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “You’re a monster.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Head content warnings! A little rough because I didn't take as much time as usual to edit, but I want to make sure I got this out sooner than later. Trying to get back in the swing of things, but this semester has been kicking my butt a bit so I haven't had as much energy for writing. Still, I want to make sure I'm putting in the time that each chapter needs. Thank you all as always for such kind and positive feedback <3

CW: sex, violence

_ This isn’t like the others. This isn’t a memory or anything I’ve seen before. _

_ I’m in my void, but this is different. Everything feels off. Despite being in a large, vast expanse, I feel claustrophobic. My breathing sounds so loud in my ears and it feels as if eyes from far away are watching me.  _

_ In the distance, I can see a corner of the red-black space that is much darker than the rest, a shadow that I have never seen before. Curious, I start to approach it. It is only a couple steps in when I notice that not only am I approaching the shadow, it’s coming closer to me, too. Hardly any time passes before everything goes dark; I can no longer even see my own hands in front of me. The air grows colder rapidly as I amblet through the black, making me shiver and embrace myself to try and remain warm, but it’s a struggle. I turn around to look back, to see if the red light is still there for me to return to, but behind me is just as dark as in front. Wandering around further, I lose my sense of direction and I don’t think I could head back the way that I came even if I wanted to.  _

_ I hear murmurs in the distance. With no other guidance, I try to move in that direction. The air becomes thicker, and just moving my legs in front of me becomes a labored effort. The murmuring does not get any louder, either. It’s as though I’m walking on a treadmill, desperately moving forward but not making any tangible progress. My body aches from all the walking and the frigid air. I can only keep up so much longer before collapsing onto the ground.  _

_ The land beneath me offers me no more warmth than the air above. A memory of a high school English class comes back to me. In Dante’s Inferno, the 9th layer of Hell was a frozen wasteland for traitors.  _

_ Maybe after all this time this is true death, coming to claim me from whatever trap this void is. Freedom at last.  _

_ The murmuring morphs into gentle sobs. They sound familiar, but they are still too distant to make out. I want to get up, to hoist myself back onto my feet and march forward, but all energy has drained out of me. My body is a hollow shell, waiting for the vultures to come and start picking at me.  _

_ The sobbing grows louder. I can’t tell if the voice is approaching me or just becoming greater. After a few moments, however, it stops abruptly. The smell of blood enters my nostrils, jolting me up. In a blink of the eye, I see a light shining down on a figure facing away from me roughly twenty feet ahead.  _

_ Even with him turned away from me, I recognize him instantly. I could pick out the shape of him in any crowd. I want to run to him, to grab him in my arms, but my body feels too heavy and sore to move. The smell of blood intensifies.  _

_ “This is your fault.” _

_ It’s his voice, but I hear it whispering in my ear, somehow being projected perfectly from so far away.  _

_ I want to respond, to ask him what he means or to say something that could be of some comfort. His voice sounds so painful. When I try to speak, however, my lips remain shut despite my effort to open them, as if sewn together with the world’s strongest thread.  _

_ “This is your fault. You trapped me here with you.” _

_ Everything goes black again in an instant. Thunderous footsteps echo all around me, as if an army is marching around me in aggressive circles. I cannot move, I cannot speak, I am frozen in this moment just waiting for the show around me to pass me by. I try to imagine a safer place, a warmer place, but it’s impossible to distract myself with the cacophony encompassing me.  _

_ In between the sounds of the stomping feet, voices slither through the mix, all the same voice saying the same phrases over and over again. _

_ “This is your fault.” _

_ “You could have left me be.” _

_ “You should have stopped this.” _

_ “Why did you let this happen to me?” _

_ “You’re a monster.” _

_ “You could have stopped this.” _

_ The ground beneath me rumbles as I hear thunder entering the fray of dissonant sounds. Freezing rain starts to fall on me and strikes of lightning finally light up the world around me in curt, sudden flashes. In those moments where I can see, there is only one person in front of me. _

_ Ethan. _

_ In the first flash, it’s him, looking down at me with tears in his eyes. He’s much younger, sporting the blue hair I first really got to know him in. He looks so small, so fragile. Of course, he was practically still a kid then. _

_ The next flash shows him much older. Probably from right before quarantine, judging by his hair cut neatly and his skin much clearer than it had been before. No longer the slight boy from before, all sense of fragility has faded away with this apparition. His face is blank, dejected, with eyes that are completely coal black.  _

_ In the third flash, the image of Ethan from my dream before returns.  _

_ His hair out grown like it's been, eyes with deep circles underneath, and skin so pale you could see through it. And, of course, a long, thick black-red line across his neck where it had been slit. There is no blood now, just a dry gruesome looking aftermath.  _

_ “You did this to me, Mark. You’re going to do this to me. You’re tainted.” _

_ I try to shake my head, to speak, to reach out, but my body is a stone statue. _

_ “You should never have broken out of your cage. You’re an abomination, a monster.” _

_ In the darkness, I could feel him moving closer to me. Another flash of lightning and I see him standing right in front of me, wielding a butcher knife that reflects brightly in the flash of the lightning.  _

_ “Stop this for your own good. For my own good.” _

_ The thunder and lightning stop as I feel the cold knife pressing against my neck. All the sounds around me go silent except for my own breathing.  _

_ I feel the pressure of the knife pressing against skin before it all stops. _

_ * _

“Mark, what are you doing?”

When I open my eyes, I see gray clouds above me, drifting slowly through the early morning sky. A gentle breeze tickles against my nose, rustling leaves and trees not too far from me. I feel at peace with my natural surroundings, almost as if I am a part of the earth I can feel underneath me. For the first few seconds, it’s calming. 

Then I remember that I fell asleep in my bed. 

In a slight panic, I sit up quickly to find myself lying in moist, morning grass. The grass of my backyard, to be exact, as I see the pool in front of me, a curious Chica skipping towards me, and my concerned boyfriend standing at the open sliding glass door. It’s cold outside, at least L.A. winter cold, which is only worsened by the fact that I’m wearing just a thin sleep shirt and boxers - one of my typical pajama ensembles. 

When Chica reaches me, it is with excited glee and many kisses to my face, something she only does when I come home from a long day. How long have I been out here?

And - how the fuck did I get out here?

“Mark?” Ethan calls out again, still staring at me across the yard. He remains frozen in the door. Is he scared?

Is he scared of me?

I try to shake off the thought, gently nudging the big furry ray of sunshine away from me so I can get up and quickly make my way into the house. My eyes nervously glance around to see if any stray neighbors were around, seeing me indecent and sleeping outside. When I get close to the door, I notice Ethan take a few steps back and my heart sinks.

I remember the way he looked at me in the dream. His voice whispering in my ear. 

It was just a dream, another weird dream. Shake it off.

“I - I’m sorry. I guess I must have sleep walked or something. I’m sorry if I scared you. If it makes you feel better, my back feels like shit.”

I try to smile in his direction as I pass the threshold into the house. He takes another step back, scanning me up and down. 

“Mark… You don’t look so good.” 

“What do you mean?”

“Go - go look in the bathroom.”

Uneasy, I turn away from my partner and make my way towards the first floor bathroom. It’s strange to think of me sleepwalking, sure, especially since it’s been a thing that I haven’t done since I was a kid. Maybe just with everything going on internally with me lately, the idea of waking up outside just isn’t as outlandish as the rest. Still, Ethan seemed pretty concerned looking at me, so I can’t imagine this is something I should shrug off so easily.

I get to the bathroom a moment later. There is a brief anxiousness that comes up right before I turn on the lights and look at the mirror, remembering things I have seen before. Luckily, no red eyes or undead faces look back at me. It is definitely my face and my soul staring back at me, but I understand Ethan’s concern immediately, 

On my left cheek, I see an angry red scar stretching from just to the corner of my eye all the way to my chin. I poke at it, and I feel a faint aching, but the marking looks like it should be at least a couple days old.

*

With the concerning scratch covered up by a few bandaids, I try really hard to go about my day as if everything is normal. Recording is probably out of the plan for the day, considering the last thing I want to do is try to explain to anyone, let alone 20 some million followers, my mysterious scar. As much as I’m sure I could just brush it off as me being clumsy yet again while filming (maybe even pose it as a close call for another broken nose), it feels uncomfortable looking at myself right now. I continue along with the skill I’ve gotten really good at lately - not talking about any of it and just hoping everything magically goes away somehow. 

But it’s okay if I don’t record. I know that there’s still a million other things I need to tend to at any given time, and recently, I have been putting all my energy towards recording to distract myself. 

Sitting down at my desk, I take a deep breath and open my email. I’m still weeks behind on responding to everything - while a certain someone might have posed as me and even recorded a few videos pretending to be me, he sure as hell did not answer a single goddamn email. 

I stare at the screen for at least a minute, trying to focus on any of the words in front of me but falling short. All the unread messages seem to blend together, making them illegible. I try hard to focus on just one at a time, find something easy to get to first or even just click on spam that can be trashed immediately, but it’s no use. It’s strange - ever since I started on medication for this sort of thing, attention really hasn’t been a big issue for me. Still, this is a different kind of inattentiveness than I’m used to. So much of me is really trying, but the letters almost start to dance around me on the screen.

My focus breaks as my phone buzzes in my pocket. 

Relieved by an excuse to focus on literally anything else, I look at it immediately. It’s a text message from a number I don’t have saved. 

I’m not sure if it’s a number I have received messages from before. Shortly after I “came back”, one of the first things I had to do to be able to even use my phone was delete pretty much all the conversations I had saved. There were too many messages that weren’t sent from me - too many that made me absolutely sick when I even accidentally glanced at them. It was an easy decision, too; I’m not really the type that gets sentimental with keeping old chat threads or anything. 

Regardless, it gives me absolutely no context to this person’s message.

_ I haven’t heard from you in weeks. Is this still happening? _

Reading the message, it definitely doesn’t ring any bells. I try to just assume the best case scenario that it’s a wrong number. After all, I really only talk to a small handful of people on the regular anyway. There’s not really any good reason someone else would be checking in with me whose number I don’t have saved.

_ I think you have the wrong number, sorry! _

After that’s sent, I give it a few beats but no more responses come through, which leaves me back at the task at hand. 

Hours pass with much of the same. I am able to get to a few brief messages, but for the most part I stare at the bright screen in front of me, unable to get much meaning out of the words in front of me. Maybe this is the lack of sleep finally coming to bite me in the ass, huh? I make a few breaks to try to pump more coffee into my system, but at this point it does little to heighten my concentration. Morning fades to afternoon to evening and I have little to show for my “work”. 

As soon as the guilt starts to hit in for a day pretty much wasted, a knock at the door breaks my concentration. I jump at the sound at first until I see Ethan’s face poking through the space between the door and the frame. 

“Did I scare you?”

His voice sounds honestly concerned. I can see in his eyes that he’s probably still shaken up from this morning, but I try my best to respond in a teasing, light-hearted tone.

“Yeah, your face is just the scariest thing I’ve ever seen.”

He rolls his eyes, but I see some relief on his face. “Hey, I’m going to order food, maybe we can just have a chill night tonight? You’ve been in work mode a lot this week. It might be good to take a break, I dunno.”

I get a sense through his tone that there’s something he’s not quite getting at. I can only assume this is an attempt to keep a closer eye on me, which is fair. As much as I feel that I need to keep working and get something done, I also know I haven’t been the boyfriend of the week lately. Maybe a night just with Ethan would do me well. 

I see images of the Ethan from my dream, eyes black, scarred neck. 

Shove it down. 

“Yeah, yeah, that sounds like a good idea. A night off sounds good.”

The younger man smiles at me. “Cool, cool. Okay, you stay up here. I’ll let you know when food is here, okay?”

“Do I get to know what it is?”

“No, it’s a surprise. Now, get back to whatever.” 

He ducks out of the room hastiy and suspiciously. 

Time passes quickly with me still staring at the screen, as if patience will make the problem resolve itself. Before I even manage to read an entire sentence and comprehend it fully, there is a knock on my door. Without opening it, Ethan shouts through the wood for me to come downstairs before I hear rushed footsteps away from the room and down the stairs. I narrow my eyes at the door before getting up slowly and opening it.

I’m struck first by the smell of a strong candle hitting me all the way upstairs. It’s sweet, probably some kind of warm vanilla scent. It’s strong in the way that it captures my attention easily, not so much in the way of it being offensive, thankfully. It’s a comforting smell, reminding me of winter days at my dad’s house when my step mom would make shortbread cookies. Entering through the door after getting off the school bus and being greeted by the smell of baking before even seeing a single face. 

I don’t dwell upstairs for long, though, as much as I could just sit and reminisce for hours if I let myself. Knowing there is an impatient man probably as hungry as I am waiting for me, I head towards the direction of the vanilla scent. 

What greets me downstairs is far more than I anticipated.

The lights are dimmed, with a few candles illuminating the kitchen. Probably the source of all the sweet scents, but luckily getting closer to the source didn’t make them overpowering. The space is cleaner than it’s been in a while - mostly my fault, since I have been less attentive than usual. The kitchen table is set up with a candle in the center, a nice red tablecloth underneath, and two steak dinners still in their carry-out containers arranged neatly by mine and Ethan’s typical chairs. In the background, I hear a soft piano playing out of the speaker just loud enough that I can hear it as I come closer to the table. The one thing missing from the scene is my boyfriend. 

As if he could read my mind, he enters the room on cue, and for a second I forget to breathe. Outside of the Unus costume, it’s been a long time since I have seen Ethan in formal wear. Probably the last time was Wade’s wedding if I had to guess? But here he is, in a white button up with a skinny black tie, a smoke gray suit jacket, slacks just a few shades lighter than the jacket, and black rimmed glasses I rarely see him wearing. 

“I guess I missed the memo?” I say, glancing down at my sweats and old sweatshirt. I try to be playful, but honestly it almost feels embarrassing looking like so much of a scrub when my partner is here dressed to the nines. 

“Surprise!” Ethan smiles sheepishly. “I know it’s been hard since - things happened. I thought a date night might be nice to feel like normal humans again. Even if we can’t go outside.”

“You look incredible.” 

I speak with a level of sincerity that I know can be rare between us. In response, I can see a little blush creep up onto Ethan’s cheeks.

“You, too. Like, you always do. I’m just a dork in nice clothes. Now, go sit down. Some nice people slaved over that food, I assume.” 

And I sit down. And we eat. And we have a normal meal like a normal couple for the first time in millenia. Ethan dominates most of the conversation, but it’s not in the sense of him speaking over me. I feel comfortable just sitting and listening to him, asking him just little questions here and there to keep him talking. I have so little to say, so little I want to dwell on in my own life and hearing his voice soothes me. 

To think, I could have never heard this voice again. I almost never got the chance to sit here, watching his eyes light up as he talks up random things happening on stream or merch ideas that he’s been working on or even just dumb memes he shows me intermittently that he’s seen. 

It’s been so long since we just had the time together. Genuine, normal, human time together. Sitting here with him, hearing him talk about whatever Among Us stream is happening next, seeing the light glimmering in his blue eyes behind the glasses, I wouldn’t trade this for all the fame in the world. For the first time in over seven years, my soul belongs to Ethan and only Ethan. 

*

The night grows older sooner than I would like. We spend hours just sitting together, sometimes talking and sometimes just enjoying the company. We talk a lot throughout the night about possibly moving to another room, watching something on the TV or what not, but we never do it. Hours pass of sitting at the table talking about nothing. Eventually, however, it does start to get later. Together, we both clear the table and start blowing out candles. I don’t imagine I will be going to bed anytime soon, but I get a sense that Ethan is starting to get antsy to lay down since he keeps making comments about being tired and wanting to move to the bedroom. As the kind partner that I am, I follow him up the stairs, but he stops me right when we make it to the top, turning around to face me. 

“Can I help you?”

Ethan leans in to kiss me. It lingers a little longer than usual, but he does pull back after a few seconds. “Hey, um, I was wondering. I’m not super tired just yet.”

I tilt my head to the side. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

There’s an awkward pause, which ends with me having to prompt my awkward partner. “And?”

Ethan looks down for a second as he searches for words, ostensibly. “And, um, maybe we can do something else first instead.”

“Do you want to go and watch something?”

“No, no. Maybe - something else that we haven’t done in a while.”

It finally clicks.

It has been a while, hasn’t it? Of course, nothing physical has happened between us since I “came back” and even then, it was a while since it happened before. As much as I missed the intimacy, in the last few weeks things were getting so hectic with the channel and there wasn’t really a solid way for me to communicate to Ethan, “Hey, I know we’re both busy as hell and constantly exhausted, but can we please have sex soon because I’m about to die?” Honestly, as I got closer to the end, it even became less and less important in the grand scheme of things. But, standing here with Ethan awkwardly trying to ask, it becomes apparent to me that it has been months at this point. 

“I-it’s okay if not. It’s totally cool. I figured I would ask. I know you’re probably super tired still and with everything that’s gone on, if you need more time, too, that’s okay, too-”

I have to cut him off with a quick kiss on his nervous lips. I can see him trembling slightly, and it almost hurts to see it.

It hasn’t been on my mind much at all, but when I take a second to think about it, I realize how much I do miss the intimate side of our relationship. The thought of it feels so simple, so not complicated. One piece of who we are that maybe, just maybe, hasn’t been ruined by supernatural methods. 

I want simplicity. I want another taste of normal life. I want so badly to just enjoy being human for a little bit. 

“I want to,” I reply in a whisper against his lips. “I want to, a whole lot.” 

I see concern melting off of Ethan’s shoulders. He grabs me by the hand and turns around to start dragging me towards the bedroom. My partner is a lot of things, but tactful is not necessarily one of them. I stop him when we reach our bedroom before he can continue to pull me towards the bed. Ethan’s trying to take the lead right now, something I know which is not our typical set-up. Something I know that he has stated many times he prefers  _ not _ to do, but something deep inside me gives me the sense that he’s taking the lead out of a sense of nerves. He’s worried about me. He’s worried that I still am not really in control here.

I want to show him I am. I want to let him sit back and not be the caregiver for once. I want to take charge again and trust myself. I want him to trust  _ me _ .

Getting a steady grip on his tie, I pull him close. At the gesture, I see his eyes go wide and light up. It’s hard not to smile at the slight change in his demeanor. I only allow myself to smile at him for a brief second, however, before I press my lips against his again. 

A memory comes to mind, a deep, dreadful sense of deja vu. The last time these lips kissed Ethan with this much lewd passion. I push it back, push it down, try hard to push it out of my mind so I can just enjoy this moment. This normal, human moment. 

His arms come up to circle around my neck, and I am freed from my intrusive thoughts as I tug Ethan even closer by his neck tie. I sense myself becoming more forceful, more demanding in the kiss. It’s not typical - all in all, I am a very vanilla guy, more vanilla than Ethan for sure, but right now something deep inside of me is full of pent-up restlessness that wants to be more forceful, more controlling, more rough in this situation. As I tug on the neck tie more harshly and start to nip at the younger man’s lips, his responses only seem to encourage me with the excited gasp that breaks through his parted lips. 

As much as I love the accessory and the small bit of power it’s giving me in this situation, I know that sooner or later, the tie is going to have to go. Maintaining contact with our lips, I loosen the knot before pulling back for just a second to allow for me to yank it over Ethan’s head and throw it off to the side. Seeing where my mind is heading already, the other man shrugs off his gray jacket, leaving just the white button up underneath. I watch his face for a moment, noticing the way his glasses have started to fog up a little bit on the edges. 

“You’re not gonna see very well soon enough with these on,” I say, moving a hand up to take hold of the black frame.

“I’m not gonna be able to see very well with them off, either,” he retorts playfully.

I give a light shrug as I pull his glasses off, taking a little more care to lean over to place them on the nearest surface. “Doesn’t matter too much, really. You’re far more handsome right now anyway.”

Before he can protest that comment, my lips are back onto his for a few moments before I pull back to shove him towards the bed. Not enough to hurt, but with a little more force than I usually use. I’m shocked at how good it feels at this moment. 

Ethan takes the sign to make his way towards the bed, sitting with an eager glow on his eyes on the edge of the bed. Staring up at me with those bright blue-green eyes, cheeks flushed and lips kiss-swollen, I want to take a picture to keep this image of him in my mind forever. 

Gentler than before, I push him down into the mattress beneath him so that I can comfortably get on top of him. My lips move down to his neckline, plant kisses against the stubble there with growing force. Eventually, I make my way down to his neck, starting to suck and nip at the skin to the point of leaving marks in my wake. 

I pull back for a second when I notice a particularly dark circle forming on his neck. Fuck. This is territory I had always assumed before I shouldn’t engage with - being people on camera for a living and all that. “Is - is this okay? Are you okay? Am I going too far?”

He’s quick to shake his head. “No, I mean - yes - yeah, this is good, really good. Don’t stop.”

Part of me is still a little concerned, but I take his word and go back to kiss his neck. Making my way lower slowly, I release the first few buttons on his shirt, giving more space to dig deeper into his chest. The concern inside me passes in no time at all, as I get entrenched once again in what’s happening. My fingers move further, fumbling blindly but reaching their goals eventually of undoing more of the buttons until the shirt is completely open and his chest is completely open to me. 

At first, I pull back slightly, just so I could start running my hands over his chest. It’s been so long since I’ve really just  _ seen _ him. While his frame is still much smaller than mine, running my fingers over his chest, I can feel all the places where muscle has taken over what was once soft flesh. In my own quarantine mission to get more fit, sometimes I forget how strong Ethan has gotten. Physically as well as mentally. 

He catches me staring for a moment and takes the opportunity to sit up, shrugging the shirt off of his arms before reaching down to lift up my own t-shirt. As much as I want to keep my hands glued to Ethan, I raise my arms for the moment to make his job easier. 

He takes the space to lean up and start kissing my shoulder, but I’m not having that just in this moment. I pin him down onto the bed with both my hands on his shoulders before returning to his lips to kiss hard enough to bruise. The man below me lets out a little moan that starts off in annoyance but melts into approval. 

My hand makes its way up from his chest towards his neck. While we kiss, it just rests there for a few moments before I notice my hand grabbing hold of Ethan’s neck and tightening ever so slightly. It’s not something I have ever even considered before, but right now my body is starting to go on autopilot as I just sit back and enjoy. 

He lets out another gasp and his hips press upward into mine. He turns his head away from the kiss to murmur out. “God, Mark. Please.”

I release the grip on his neck so that I can use both my hands to unbuckle his belt and unzip his slacks. I have to get off of him for a moment to give myself the space to yank down his pants and underwear completely and discard his remaining clothing in a pile at the edge of the bed. As much as I would also love to sit and take a permanent mental picture of him like this, flushed all over, naked as the day he was born - I know there are things I need to get to help the moment continue. 

Despite going untouched for so long, the lube is still exactly where I last saw it, thankfully. Part of me had almost assumed it would have disappeared out of existence entirely. I grab what I need and return back to the bed, positioning myself between his legs. Ethan’s trembling underneath me, probably in part due to the cold air on his naked body, but also I can recognize this as excited nerves I have seen before. Positive memories flood my mind for once, flashes of simpler times when I was in this exact position getting this same reaction. 

All I want is  _ that _ again - just us, uninterrupted. Feeling so close to him that I never want to let go. 

I pop open the plastic bottle in my hands, coating my fingers generously in the slick liquid. I swear I can feel the other man shudder underneath me just at the sound. Smiling, I move my hand downward, placing my finger at his entrance before just looking up at him. Waiting for permission before I receive a small nod. At that signal, I slowly ease my first finger inside of him. 

I try to be cognizant of being careful at this point. After all, it has been a while for both of us. I wait to feel him relax before I start to gradually move my finger in and out of him. It’s hard to be patient, especially with this strange urge inside me that just wants to  _ take _ . And, god, with the sounds that the other man makes in this moment, it’s so hard to focus on anything. The low, deep groan escaping his throat far more than his actual mouth. With time, I eventually ease a second finger inside, using the same care to keep a snail’s pace, waiting to feel muscles relaxed before moving any faster. 

It takes less time than I anticipate until he feels ready. I try to be patient still, but my patience is drawing thin. Pulling my fingers out, I reach for the bottle again to coat my fingers generously once more before using them to cover my length in slick lube. Already anticipating my next moves, Ethan presses his legs up high against his chest, giving me more space in a not-so-subtle way of asking for more.

“Fucking bendy gymanst,” I grumble, backing up momentarily as I shrug away my own sweats and underwear.

He lets out a breathy giggle. “Yeah, isn’t that what you’re doing here?”

Rolling my eyes, I shove his chest gently before reaching down to line up against him. “Hopefully this will shut your yap,” I whisper teasingly before easing into him.

It is a pretty effective way to get him to shut up, after all. His eyes seem to roll back into his head as he lets out a soft moan. 

Feeling him all around me, it’s almost too much, too overwhelming. God, it feels like it’s been years, not months, and I have to stay mindful not to move too fast too soon. I stay still for a beat once I’ve moved as far inside as I can, trying to calm my own breathing. Something deep inside of me just wants to take control, to break him down in so many ways that I know I can’t do just yet. One of my hands snakes up his chest again, back towards his neck. Not gripping just yet, just resting there before my hips begin to move again. 

Moving this slowly is almost painful, but I keep up the easy rhythm for a while. Both to make sure not to hurt him, but also because I enjoy the whining sounds dripping from his swollen lips.

“Please, faster. T-too slow, please.” His words are getting more slurred, more simplistic in that strangled tone that makes me shudder. 

The impatience in me takes over after he speaks. I try to build up to a faster rhythm gradually, but it’s hard to pull back even a little bit. I let go of my inhibitions, thrusting faster and harder into the man that only continues to encourage me with those  _ sounds _ . I could finish just from listening to his voice. 

My hand tightens around his neck before a second hand comes up there. I can feel him tighten around me momentarily when I squeeze harder on his neck. 

Something dark in me wants to keep squeezing, wants to keep making him shudder and tighten and just absolutely wreck him in every way. It should be fine. I know exactly how long he can hold his breath for, after all.

It’s strange. This has never been something I’ve tried with anyone before, but in this moment it’s not even about the sexual side of dominating him like this. It’s an animalistic urge to control and to hurt that I really don’t want to think too hard about while I’m enjoying myself like this. 

And after all, Ethan’s enjoying himself too. I see one of his hands sneaking down between us to start stroking himself while the other grips harshly at my shoulder, digging his black-painted fingernails into the tan skin. 

It’s pure ecstasy. I release my grip every few moments, giving him a second to breath before restricting his air flow again. Each round goes longer and longer as I lose control to my dark urges. 

In no time, I feel Ethan’s coming onto his hands and our chests. It’s filthy, but I love the feeling of it. The mess of sweat, cum, lube, everything all over us. As he goes over that cliff, he goes limp underneath me, nails pulling out from my skin as both of his hands fall down onto the bed beside him. 

The sight of it, along with the feeling of him tightening again, sends me over the edge. Squeezing his neck harder and harder, I finish inside him with a low growl.

I feel spent, but I keep my grip on his neck.

I keep my grip on his neck, but I feel like I am floating out of my body. Like I’m completely out of control. Like those dark urges have completely taken over everything. 

I keep my grip on his neck, and I tighten it. I tighten it until my fingers ache, and I keep the grip. Ethan opens his eyes for a second in a panic, trying to grab for my hands but too exhausted and worn down to be able to do much. His hands go limp again. I swear I see his eyes flash black before they close.

With a struggling breath, I come back to myself and quickly drop my grip.

Ethan looks so still.

“Oh god, I’m so sorry. I’m so -” I shake at his shoulders slightly, getting no response. My heart begins to pound so hard and fast it might break my rib cage. Shaking fingers move up to his neck, pressing to feel for a pulse. It takes me a few panicked seconds to find, but some relief does wash over me when I feel it. “Ethan? Ethan, please, wake up. I’m sorry. I didn’t - I’m so sorry.”

He finally rustles ever so slightly underneath me. His eyes blink open for just a second before closing. “Mark?”

It’s too much. I need to get out of the space, get away from him and fast. I almost stumble as I rush off of the bed, finding my discarded clothes and tossing them back onto my body. Advancing towards the bedroom door, I hear Ethan call my name one more time, but I don’t have the heart to look back, to see the fear in his eyes after what I just did. 

_ “This is your fault.” _

_ “You’re a monster.” _

  
  
  



End file.
